Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks forward Candace Parker reacts against the Minnesota Lynx in the second half of a single elimination WNBA Playoff basketball game at the Staples Center on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018 in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Sparks won 75-68. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

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Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 has a word with a referee during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 has a word with a referee during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angele Sparks’ Candace Parker #3 is fouled by the New York Liberty’s Kiah Stokes #41 during their game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angele Sparks’ Candace Parker #3 drives to the hoop as the New York Liberty’s Kiah Stokes #41 defends during their game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angele Sparks’ Candace Parker #3 and the New York Liberty’s Kiah Stokes #41 battle for a loose ball during their game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angele Sparks’ Candace Parker #3 drives to the hoop as the New York Libertyss Sugar Rodgers #14 and Kia Vaughn #7 defend during their game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angele Sparks’ Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3, Nneka Ogwumike #30 and Chelsea Gray #12 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks’ Candace Parker, right, is defended by New York Liberty’s Tina Charles during the first half of a WNBA basketball game Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

New York Liberty’s Tina Charles (31) is defended by Los Angeles Sparks’ Candace Parker during the first half of a WNBA basketball game Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 has a word with a referee during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 has a word with a referee during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker #3 during their game against the New York Liberty at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angele Sparks’ Candace Parker #3 is fouled by the New York Liberty’s Kiah Stokes #41 during their game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

New York Liberty’s Bria Hartley (8) drives to the basket between Los Angeles Sparks’ Essence Carson, left, and Candace Parker during the second half of a WNBA basketball game Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Los Angeles Sparks forward Candace Parker shoots against the Minnesota Lynx in the first half of a single elimination WNBA Playoff basketball game at the Staples Center on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks’ Candace Parker (3) speaks with teammate Chelsea Gray (12) during a time out against the Minnesota Lynx in the first half of a single elimination WNBA Playoff basketball game at the Staples Center on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks forward Candace Parker (3) passes against the Minnesota Lynx in the first half of a single elimination WNBA Playoff basketball game at the Staples Center on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks forward Candace Parker (3) stands over Minnesota Lynx forward Temi Fagbenle (14) as she grabs the loose ball in the second half of a single elimination WNBA Playoff basketball game at the Staples Center on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018 in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Sparks won 75-68. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Los Angeles Sparks forward Candace Parker (3) stands over Minnesota Lynx forward Temi Fagbenle (14) as she grabs the loose ball in the second half of a single elimination WNBA Playoff basketball game at the Staples Center on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018 in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Sparks won 75-68. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

It’s a mantra that Candace Parker — like many other athletes and mothers continuing their careers after having children — lives by. Her daughter comes first, career second.

But when Parker was left off the 2016 Team USA Basketball Roster, in a controversial decision by then-coach Geno Auriemma, that mantra was put to the test.

Then again, Parker was a consensus top recruit in the nation coming out of high school, the first overall pick in the 2008 WNBA Draft, Rookie of the Year and MVP in that 2008 season and a WNBA Champion in 2016, making the omission all the more shocking. Playing at her prime, Parker had looked forward to taking Lailaa to Brazil. But in a questionable decision, that opportunity was stripped away.

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After the U.S. won another gold medal, Dawn Staley, a former WNBA player and highly successful college coach was named Auriemma’s successor. She tried to convince Parker to join the squad, knowing full well that Parker was still upset.

“I called Candace personally because that’s what I do,” Staley said. “I called her to see if she would be open for a conversation about it, and we kept playing phone tag, but she knew why I was calling.”

“It was too much for her to bear,” Staley added. “I wish she was a part of USA Basketball, because I think she could help us win the gold medal in the World Cup and the Olympic Games. But I understand Candace, I understand her. But if she doesn’t want to do it, I can’t force her.”

Would Parker consider swallowing her pride and readying for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo?

Not a chance.

“That’s a chapter that’s closed,” Parker said. “I understand the responsibility of it now, later in life when somebody does my daughter wrong, or she doesn’t feel that she was respected, I want her to have the ability and the amount of respect for herself to understand when it’s time to move on.

“For me it feels like I wasn’t handled in the correct way, and for me, as a role model for my daughter, I can’t go back to that,” she added.

—-

It is 11 a.m. before the final Sparks home game of the season against the New York Liberty, and Candace Parker and her teammates have just finished shoot-around, going over plays and sequences to prepare for the 7:30 p.m. start.

As the longest-tenured player on the Sparks, and the unquestioned leader of a squad littered with championship talent, this routine is normal — both for Parker and Lailaa. After she is finished with shoot-around, Parker hopped in her burnt orange and silver Tesla — custom made with Tennessee colors — and drove home to spend quality time with Lailaa, and relax before a game.

“It’s not easy for anyone in this league, with the condensed schedule, things are crazy,” Parker’s former teammate Kristi Toliver said. “I couldn’t imagine having a child with me throughout this, and again that’s why I say that I don’t think anybody could handle it better than Candace has. Lailaa is a great kid, she’s raised a great one, so obviously she’s had some help from her family and close friends throughout that process, and nobody does it alone, but she does a phenomenal job.”

But Parker has had to put personal struggles aside and try not to let them interfere with her play on the court.

In addition to the Team USA debacle, Parker and the father of her child, Shelden Williams, separated in 2016. Parker paid $400,000 in alimony to the 5th overall pick of the 2005 NBA Draft, and the duo agreed to joint custody of Lailaa in April, right as the 2018 WNBA season was about to begin.

A week after news of the finalization of the divorce broke, Parker was quoted on the Show Me Your Friends podcast for the first time about her decision not to play for Team USA going forward. A month later, the Sparks opened their season in Minnesota, but Parker did not play due to injury.

It was this flurry of distractions — as if Parker needed more — that rekindled her competitive spirit.

It had never burned out, but reached a low point after the Sparks’ crushing defeat in the 2017 WNBA Finals. Parker was determined — with Lailaa as her guiding light — to continue not only elevating her game on the court, but to continue her strive to become a better mother.

“She does what a lot of people don’t see,” longtime teammate Alana Beard said. “I get emotional when I talk about her because I’ve been here with her for six years. I’ve seen her growth — not as a basketball player I’m putting all of that stuff aside — but as a person. She’s constantly worked on herself to make sure that she’s improving herself day by day.”

“I don’t have a kid, I have a dog,” Beard added. “But to see what she does night in and night out, day in and day out, she wakes up, takes her kid to school, she has her two dogs, she fixes lunch, she gets to practice … men don’t have to do that. I’m not being negative in any way, but if they had to step in her shoes, they wouldn’t be able to do what she’s doing.”

—–

At some point in the unidentifiable future, Parker will retire from the game she loves. It’s an inevitable fact that she has accepted — begrudgingly — that she is “getting old” although he stats this season don’t show it.

Tennessee head coach Holly Warlick, an assistant under the late hall of fame coach Pat Summitt while Parker starred in Knoxville, noted that she felt Parker could make a “hell of a coach.”

“I think Candace would be a great coach,” Warlick said. “She knows the game, she knows how to treat people, she understands the process, she understands players today. She understands she’s not going to be able to play the rest of her life, but I would be shocked if she ever just totally wanted to get out of basketball, she does a heck of a job commentating, like I said, she knows the game.”

For Parker, however, coaching is not something she sees in her own future, and the flexibility of broadcasting can help minimizing the time away from Lailaa.

This offseason, Parker provided commentary during Turner’s broadcast of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament, as Parker sat alongside the likes of Seth Davis, Brendan Haywood and Greg Gumbel throughout the coverage.

“I always said that there was no better job than playing basketball for a living and getting paid to play,” Parker said. “But second is being paid to talk about basketball, and that meant a lot to me.”

—–

There are hard days, and easier days. As Parker noted, the most challenging thing about being a mother is leaving the difficult moments behind her when she pulls into her driveway with the Tesla, and finding mother mode.

“I think as a competitor we get so consumed with what we’re doing on the basketball court, so I think my biggest effort in being a mom is to not take it home,” she said. “So if I’m frustrated or I’m mad about the way I’m playing or whatever, I try to still remain patient and be a mom to her.”

Sometimes, the moments to be a mother can occur on the court, immediately after a game. After Parker’s first game back from a back injury this season against the Lynx, she shared a moment with Lailaa after the victory, as the two danced together before Parker left to the locker room to complete her postgame interviews.

The brief moment, captured on twitter and retweeted by Parker for the world to see, carries more weight than the typical single mother-daughter interaction. In Western society, the cliché of the single mother who overcomes difficulties to be a role model to her children is perhaps overwritten.

But Parker’s dance was quite literally in the spotlight, and so is everything she says and everything she does each day, and even what kind of car she drives. It’s that spotlight that differentiates Parker from other single mothers. The struggle is present for the world to see, but the joy is present too.

She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I think you really realize that you feel emotions 10 times more when you’re feeling them through your child, so for me, I feel every emotion she has on 10,” Parker said. “So if she’s happy and excited, I am. If she’s passionate about something, I am. If she’s sad, I am. So I think for me that’s the joy of motherhood, to be able to experience the world again.”